Just Released Research Report:  The 2009 Travel Card Benchmark Survey Results

Mahendra Gupta (Washington University in St. Louis) and Richard Palmer (Southeast Missouri State University)

August 5, 2009 (St. Louis).  Travel card spending in North America increased from $143 billion in 2006 to $152 billion in 2008 and is expected to decrease to $140 billion during 2009, and increase to $159 billion by 2011, according to a study released in July of 2009 by RPMG Research Corporation. This finding is one of many new insights into the progress of travel cards in the marketplace reported in the 2009 Corporate Travel Card Benchmark Survey Results. The information in the Survey Results is based on 824 responses from travel card using organizations that were either customers of one of 14 major financial institutions or members of a National Business Travel Association or National Association of Purchasing Card Administrators.

Forty-four percent of Corporations and 53% of Government and Not-for-Profit entities expect travel card spending declines throughout 2009.  The average decline for 2009 is expected to be    -3.7% for Corporate and -8.4% for Government and Not-for-Profit entities. 

Fifty-three percent of Corporations and 50% of Government and Not-for-Profit organizations expect higher levels of travel card spending by 2011.  The average rate of expected increase of 2011 over 2008 spending levels is 6.0% for the Corporate and 4.7% for Government and Not-for-Profit segments. 

Respondents report a variety of benefits from travel card use. The majority of respondents indicate that travel card information was important to obtaining discounts on travel expenses including airfare, hotels, or auto rentals. The average discount obtained by organizations that use travel card data as a primary source of information is over 2% higher than that of organizations that do not use travel card data in negotiations with vendors.

Overall, 94% believe that the risk of travel policy violation is the same as or lower with travel cards than it is with other payment methods in the organization. Sixty-one percent of respondents believe that travel card use is associated with significantly lower likelihood of travel policy violation. Similarly, 90% of respondents believe that the risk of reimbursing misrepresented or fraudulent expenses with travel cards is similar to or lower than that of other payment methods in the organization. Fifty-four percent of respondents believe that travel card use is associated with significantly lower likelihood of fraudulent or misrepresented spending.

The Results highlight a variety of the “best practices” of high performance travel card programs, including insights into organizational leadership, policy, use of card data and complementary expense management technology, controls, and program management. The Results also enable the reader to assess and find ways to improve their own travel card program performance by providing benchmark travel card program statistics by size of business, type of governmental unit, and industry category.

Finally, the Results shed light on a variety of trends in the market, including the use of travel cards outside of North America, liability arrangements, and customer satisfaction with card issuer service, support, technology, data capture, and reporting.